Brands and Domain Names: INTA Roundtable Explores the Issues

León Sánchez Ambía (Fulton & Fulton, Mexico)

As the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) considers policy recommendations, INTA recently held a roundtable featuring INTA member and ICANN Board Vice Chair León Sánchez Ambía (Fulton & Fulton, Mexico), who discussed issues confronting brand owners within the domain name system.

INTA Senior Director of Internet Policy Lori Schulman led the Latin America Virtual Roundtable on September 16.

This year, the board of ICANN will consider policy recommendations in such areas as registration directory services (known as WHOIS), rights protection mechanisms, and subsequent procedures for new rounds of applications for generic top-level domains. Also top of mind are issues surrounding the fight against domain name system abuse and cybersecurity.

Mr. Sánchez explained ICANN’s efforts to track and report domain name abuse and shared the status of policy negotiations in some of ICANN’s major working groups. When asked whether ICANN is doing enough to address brand owners’ concerns, he suggested that ICANN could be doing more.

He also stressed the importance of brand owners’ continued engagement in the ICANN policymaking process and urged his Latin American colleagues to become more engaged as the conversations at ICANN tend to be dominated by U.S. and European participants.

As an accomplished intellectual property practitioner, Mr. Sánchez represents end users through ICANN’s At-Large Advisory Committee. He drafted the Internet Users Rights Protection Act for Mexico, and has been very active on issues such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), advocating to defend users’ and creators’ rights in order to achieve a balance between regulation and freedom.

Given the variety and complexity of the topics, a part 2 of the roundtable is in the works.

Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of this article, readers are urged to check independently on matters of specific concern or interest.